What Amber explained was exactly what I’d feared: through the Apple Music subscription, which I had, Apple now deletes files from its users’ computers. When I signed up for Apple Music, iTunes evaluated my massive collection of Mp3s and WAV files, scanned Apple’s database for what it considered matches, then removed the original files from my internal hard drive. REMOVED them. Deleted. If Apple Music saw a file it didn’t recognize—which came up often, since I’m a freelance composer and have many music files that I created myself—it would then download it to Apple’s database, delete it from my hard drive, and serve it back to me when I wanted to listen, just like it would with my other music files it had deleted.
“iCloud Music Library is turned on automatically when you set up your Apple Music Subscription…When your Apple Music Subscription term ends, you will lose access to any songs stored in your iCloud Music Library.
I rarely download music and keep all of the stuff I do have on thumbdrives because my computer's packed of crap, so I've never had this happen. I didn't even know it COULD happen.
Is this a new thing? Do you think it'll eventually happen to everything that ends up downloaded, like music, software, etc since we're apparently doing away with physical copies of things? Is this something that you think is "ok" for companies to do? Should there be more transparency?